Selections

  • The Girls

    from This is Not the Tropics

    Becca liked dogs.  She might even have called herself a dog person, but she couldn’t quite figure out why Professor Blakely had asked her to watch his dogs while he was in Italy for a conference during the week of fall break.  Only later did she realize she hadn’t been his first choice.  Of course not.  What had she been thinking?  Everyone on the small campus of Pilgrim’s College knew how much Professor Blakely loved his dogs.  They were his...

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  • A Member of the Family

    from This is Not the Tropics

    But that was her father’s story.  That was how Lena had pictured it all the times he had told the story when she was a child.  Today Lena pans across that familiar rooftop once more, and this time she notices how the dog sees Rocko out of the corner of her eye, glances quickly toward him and then away, distracted by the ball.  When she is suddenly lifted into the air by his strong arms she is confused for a...

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  • What She Knows

    from This is Not the Tropics

    All day, at any given moment, an insipid song can be heard simpering through the PA system–”Close to You,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “Muskrat Love.”  It is aural terrorism.  The office Annie shares with another woman is small–a storage closet the company converted into a space for two computers and a shared printer, shelves above small desks.  All day long insurance salesmen come to her office with letters barely legible, badly written, full of outrageous misspellings and ask Annie to type them. ...

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  • Chapter 3

    from A Sandhills Ballad

    When at last they pulled into the driveway, Mary looked at the ranch as though it were a distant memory. The light and heat were intense now at the end of July. The grass had bleached yellow and in the heat of mid-day; even the birds and the insects were silent. Blue ran along the corral fence as they drove past. He tossed his head and snorted, and Mary knew this had been planned to make her homecoming feel less awkward....

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  • Chapter 4

    from A Sandhills Ballad

    Mary hadn’t thought about the trailer where she and Brian had lived together. Now, though, she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She saw over and over a forlorn picture of the trailer house standing empty on the prairie. She thought about all of their things still there, silently waiting, about how they had left the house the morning of the accident to visit Brian’s cousins in Oconto. She could not remember in what condition she had left the trailer....

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